Forough Farrokhzad - COLD SEASON

And

Here I am

A lone woman

On the doorstep of a cold spell

At the very start of awareness

Of the polluted state

Of this planet

And the plain and dismal

Despair of the skies

And the sad impotence

Of these hands of stone...

...

Read the rest HERE 

Forugh Farrokhzâd - WHERE AM I FROM?

Where am I from ?

I said to my mother « There,

It’s over. As usual: Over before you think it over.

Let’s call the newspapers

Salam! O unusualness of a solitude!

Embrace the room
because black clouds
always absolve the latest regrets

and because - when in the presence of a candle – it is an enlightened secret
to know
that its final and longest flame is never more than a dream.

Let us believe,

Let us believe in this outset of a cold season

In what remains of the garden, in the illusory things, the blunt and idle sickles, the boxed up seeds

Look at this falling snow...

Perhaps the truth was
these two hands

these two youthful hands that were
buried in flurries of snow

Next year, when at the window panes,
spring mates the sky, bursting in it,

the green gushes of the frail shoots
will burgeon
– O love

O, most unique love of all

Let us believe in this outset of a cold season

Forough Farrokhzad (Cold Season)

translated from the original farsi by Sylvie M. Miller

Forugh Farrokhzâd - HAPPY REMAINS, SAD REMAINS

Happy remains

Sad remains

Pensive and secretive remains,

Affable, elegant remains

Remains that are fond of delicacies,

At breaks that are chosen by time, in an uncertain context where light will not stay,

And where desire is nothing but the purchase of the decayed fruits of thoughtlessness

How strange are these people who wait for an accident at crossroads,

How strange are these strident whistles shrills

- when all that needs to be done is

when all that has to be done is,

When all that should be done is
to run a man over under the wheels of time

A man who came forward between the wet trees

Forough Farrokhzad (Cold Season)

translated from the original farsi by Sylvie M. Miller

Forugh Farrokhzâd - I BELIEVE MY MOTHER CRIED ON THAT NIGHT

I believe that on that night
my mother cried 

- what laughable clear mindedness in such a dead end opening

Why didn’t I pay attention ?

Each moment of happiness was aware that there would be only ruins left from your hands

And I did not pay attention

Up until that moment when

the window of the clock opened and the wretched canary came out to chime four times

Came out to chime four times

And I was impassioned

As impassioned as was this frail woman

Whose eyes were like the empty nest of Simurghs

And who, I believe, carried in the movement of her thighs, the pure vision of my happiness

towards the mattress of the night.

Will I ever again comb my hair in the wind ?

Will I ever again plant the flower bed with violets?

Will I ever again set more candle holders in the sky at the window pane?

Will I ever again dance on top of the drinking glasses?

And will I ever again long to hear the bell ring
at the door? 

Forough Farrokhzad (Cold Season)

translated from the original farsi by Sylvie M. Miller

Forugh Farrokhzâd - WHY DID I NOT PAY ATTENTION ?

Why did I not pay attention ?

I believe my mother cried on that night

that night when I met with pain,

that same night when the pearl was created,

when I wed the cluster of flowers of the acacias,

when the whole of Esfahan tinkled of blue mosaics

and when my other half blended with the lymph that was in me

and the mirror reflected him to me 

so pure and clean

and all at once he called my name

and I became the wedded bride of the clustered flowers on the acacias

Forough Farrokhzad (Cold Season)

translated from the original farsi by Sylvie M. Miller

Forugh Farrokhzad - COLD SEASON

Here I am
A lone woman
On the doorstep of a cold spell...

Translation by Tatul Sonentz and Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - HERE I AM A LONE WOMAN

Here I am
A lone woman
On the doorstep of a cold spell
At the very start of awareness
Of the polluted state
Of this planet
And the plain and dismal
Despair of the skies
And the sad impotence
Of these hands of stone

Time passed
Time has passed by
And the clock has struck four times
It chimed four times today
The very first day
Of the month of Dey

I grasp the seasons’ enigma
And comprehend the language
Of mere moments
The savior sleeps in the grave
And the earth -- the good earth
Is a friendly summons
To serenity


Forugh Farrokhzad
translated by Tatul Sonentz from Sylvie M. Miller's French translation

Forough Farrokhzad - AND THESE CARDBOARD STARS

And these cardboard stars
Spinned in orbit around eternity…

Why did they summon an authority?
Why did they invite a mere glance
To the residence of vision?
Why did they pile caresses
On the tresses of virgin modesty?

Behold – in this place -- the one
Whose soothing words
And caressing glance
Dissipated dread
Now hangs
On the gallows
Of your shadows… and how
Your fingers’ five stems -- once
Five digits of integrity –
Have left their mark
On her cheek


Forough Farrokhzâd
translated by Tatul Sonentz
from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - TELL ME THE TALE OF SILENCE

What is silence?
What is it, what is it?

O love, one and only,
what can silence be
if not words yet
to be spoken…?

I am weary of speech,
but the language of birds
Is the one that tells
the tale of words used
at the celebration of nature --

The language of birds
speaks of, springtime
of spring, of leaves…

The language of birds turns
to breeze, to perfume
and breeze…

Yet, the language of birds
expires in fabrication.


Forough Farrokhzâd
translated by Tatul Sonentz from the
French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - WEARY OF MOTHER-OF-PEARL EARRINGS

I’m cold and I’m weary
of mother-of-pearl earrings

I’m cold
and I know that the flaming fears
of wild poppies
result in a mere sprinkle of blood

That is why, I shall cease to mark out margins,
I shall cease to tally,
and far from elementary paths,
I shall seek refuge
in the evidence of vast designs

I am poor
poor, poor
like the silences that separate
the clement words of the poor

and my wounds are those of love
all of love, love, love

Aside from rotations
of the Equator,
after having crossed
the eruption of mountains
I, myself
found shelter on this vagrant island,
whose secret – to this partner
whose small splinters
gave birth to the sun --

is that of self-fragmentation


Forough Farrokhzâd
translated by Tatul Sonentz
from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - WHERE AM I FROM?

Where am I from?
Where?
To be saturated like this
with the scent of nights?

The earth of its tomb is still moist--
I speak of the tomb
of these two green young hands.

You were good, my love --
a sole love among all.

So good, when you lied --
so good when you shut their eyelids
in the mirrors,

when
you picked the metal stems
from their chandeliers,

when
you took me from the black of repression
to bring me
to love’s pastures,
until,
awestruck, the steam,
surging from the fire lit by thirst,
lay on the lawn of dreams.


Forough Farrokhzâd
translated by Tatul Sonentz
from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - I SAID TO MY MOTHER "IT'S OVER'

I said to my mother, “There! It’s over.”
I said, “It always ends
before you think it over.
Let’s call the newspapers.
Let’s invite them all.”

An empty man, with no essence.
A blank, arrogant man.
See how, while chewing,
his teeth rasp --
as his eyes devour
while staring.

See how he strides,
along the soggy trees,
measured, light and firm in figure,
when at four o’clock, the blue tracks
of his veins climb on both sides of his larynx
like dead serpents
and they assert, “salam, salam“
in his troubled temples
-- this bloody Satyr…
Have you ever inhaled the smell of the four blue tulips?
Time has passed -- passed, and evening has descended
on the naked branches of the acacias.
Night advances behind the windowpanes,
excusing itself in its own tongue
to the last debris of the day.

Forough Farrokhzad
Translated by Tatul Sonentz from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - SALAM, O NIGHT!

Salam! O immaculate night.
Salam! O night that changes
the eyes of the desert wolves
into cavernous orbits of faith
and certainty.

And on the banks of your rivulets
the breeze of the willows –
that gentle breeze -- feels
the approach of the axe.

I belong to this world
where thoughts have no weight,
a world of words and noises,
a world like a snake pit
full of the clatter of the steps
of an entire people who
spins a rope to hang you --.
while I embrace you –

Salam! O immaculate night!

There is always a space
between seeing and the window.
Why did I not look
like the moment when a man
walked along the wet trees ?


Forough Farrokhzad
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - HOW CAN ONE HOLLER "HALT" ?

On the doorstep
Of a cold spell in the circle
Of those who mourn mirrors
And the most grieving gathering
Of occurrences drained of colour
In this soirée rendered successful
By the serene science of silence
How can one holler “halt!”
At one so compassionate
So thoughtful and dignified
So dejected and so ethereal?
How can one say to him
That he no longer lives?
That he never ever
Was alive?

Forugh Farrokhzad
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - O LOVE, LONELIEST LOVE OF ALL

O love

Loneliest love of all

How dark are these clouds
gathered by the sun
to watch the day
rise

As if that bird there could see itself only
by the aura of its course

As if those young leaves sighing with desire
were none but verdant margins
of imagination

As if
the purple flame
burning in the translucent memory of the panes
exists only by the pure prayer
of the lamp


Forough Farrokhzad
translated by Tatul Sonentz from the
French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

Forough Farrokhzad - REBIRTH

My whole being is a dark mishap
which repeated in itself
will take one to the dawn of creation
growth and eternity…

In this mishap I have sighed Ah!
as one sighs Ah!, in a mishap…
I have linked me to tree to water and fire…
Perhaps life is a long street where each day
a woman passes with a basket…
Life perhaps is a rope with which a man
hangs himself from a limb…
Life is perhaps a child on his way back from school…
Life is perhaps lighting a cigarette
in the tranquil interval between two embraces,
or the casual ritual of a passer by with a vacant smile
and tipped hat greeting another with “g’morning…”
Perhaps life is that incarcerated instant
When my gaze decomposes itself
In the melody of your eyes…

And in this awareness
I shall conjugate with the moon’s insight
and the discovery of the zenith in a room
that has the dimensions of a solitude…
My heart, made to measurements of one single love
Wonders at the simple pretexts for its happiness
At the decline of the beauty of flowers in a vase
At the seed you have planted in the flower bed of our house
And at the song of the canaries -- infinite as a skylight…

Ah...
This is my destiny.
This is my destiny.
My destiny is the sky that the hanging of a curtain will deny me.
My destiny is the descent on an abandoned stairway
and arrival at an alien somewhere in decay
My destiny is a mournful stroll in the garden of memory
and in the sorrow of a dying voice that says
I love your hands…

I plant my hands deep in the soil…
They will turn green, I know,
I know I know…
And the swallows will lay eggs in the
palm of my hand with ink soiled fingers…

I hang onto my ears earrings
of twin red cherries
and on my nails I stick petals of dahlias…
There is a street where
boys who were in love with me
with the same tousled hair and thin necks
and skinny legs still dream of the demure smile of a little girl
whom the wind carried away one night…

there is a street which my heart has robbed
from the neighborhood
of my childhood…

The trip is designed in the line of time
and to make the sterile line of time pregnant with form
a design from a conscious scheme returns
through enticing mirrors…

And this is why
one dies
and another stays.

No fisherman looking into a small river
flowing into a low lying field
will ever fish a pearl.

I know a tiny morose fairy residing in the sea
who gusts her heart into a small reedy flute
humming, slowly, slowly…
Just a small sad fairy
who dies at night after a kiss
and rises at dawn
with a kiss…


Forough Farokhzad
Translated by Tatul Sonentz
from Sylvie M. Miller's French translation

تولد دیگر

همه هستی من آیه تاریکیست

که ترا در خود تکرار کنان

به سحرگاه شکفتن ها و رستن های ابدی خواهد برد

من در این آیه ترا آه کشیدم آه

من در این آیه ترا

به درخت و آب و آتش پیوند زدم

زندگی شاید

یک خیابان درازست که هر روز زنی با زنبیلی از آن می گذرد

زندگی شاید

ریسمانیست که مردی با آن خود را از شاخه می آویزد

زندگی شاید طفلی است که از مدرسه بر میگردد

زندگی شاید افروختن سیگاری باشد در فاصله رخوتناک دو همآغوشی

یا عبور گیج رهگذری باشد

که کلاه از سر بر میدارد

و به یک رهگذر دیگر با لبخندی بی معنی می گوید صبح بخیر

زندگی شاید آن لحظه مسدودیست

که نگاه من در نی نی چشمان تو خود را ویران می سازد

و در این حسی است

که من آن را با ادراک ماه و با دریافت ظلمت خواهم آمیخت

در اتاقی که به اندازه یک تنهاییست

دل من

که به اندازه یک عشقست

به بهانه های ساده خوشبختی خود می نگرد

به زوال زیبای گلها در گلدان

به نهالی که تو در باغچه خانه مان کاشته ای

و به آواز قناری ها

که به اندازه یک پنجره می خوانند

آه ...

سهم من اینست

سهم من اینست

سهم من

آسمانیست که آویختن پرده ای آن را از من می گیرد

سهم من پایین رفتن از یک پله متروکست

و به چیزی در پوسیدگی و غربت واصل گشتن

سهم من گردش حزن آلودی در باغ خاطره هاست

و در اندوه صدایی جان دادن که به من می گوید

دستهایت را دوست میدارم

دستهایم را در باغچه می کارم

سبز خواهم شد می دانم می دانم می دانم

و پرستو ها در گودی انگشتان جوهریم

تخم خواهند گذاشت

گوشواری به دو گوشم می آویزم

از دو گیلاس سرخ همزاد

و به ناخن هایم برگ گل کوکب می چسبانم

کوچه ای هست که در آنجا

پسرانی که به من عاشق بودند هنوز

با همان موهای درهم و گردن های باریک و پاهای لاغر

به تبسم معصوم دخترکی می اندیشند که یک شب او را باد با خود برد

کوچه ای هست که قلب من آن را

از محله های کودکیم دزدیده ست

سفر حجمی در خط زمان

و به حجمی خط خشک زمان را آبستن کردن

حجمی از تصویری آگاه

که ز مهمانی یک آینه بر میگردد

و بدینسانست

که کسی می میرد

و کسی می ماند

هیچ صیادی در جوی حقیری که به گودالی می ریزد مرواریدی صید نخواهد کرد

من

پری کوچک غمگینی را

می شناسم که در اقیانوسی مسکن دارد

و دلش را در یک نی لبک چوبین

می نوازد آرام آرام

پری کوچک غمگینی که شب از یک بوسه می میرد

و سحرگاه از یک بوسه به دنیا خواهد آمد

Forough Farrokhzad - BREACHING THE GARDEN

That crow above our heads
that bolted from frigid skies
and dived into the chaotic clouds
of an erratic vision
while its cry
like a sharp cutlass
breached the horizon,
will take its scoop to the city…

The whole world is aware
the whole world knows that you and I
know where we first saw the garden
through that sinister icy fissure
and picked the apple
from that taunting, remote branch…
People were appalled
people were appalled while you and I
yielded to water to mirror and to lamp
with no trepidation…

The chat is not about the fragile bond
between two names
and intimacy in the old office storage room…
The talk is about
the ecstatic response of my hair
to your scorching anemone of a kiss
and the intimacy of bodies in bliss
and the radiance of our nakedness
like the scales of fish in water…

The word is about the silvery sparkle of a song
that the small spray of water sings at dawn

One night in these lush verdant woods
we asked the hare
and in these ominous cold blooded seas
the oysters laden with pearls
and on that alien intruding mountain
the young eaglets –

“what shall we do?”

They all know
they all know that we have discovered
the path to the cool silent sleep of the phoenix
that we saw the truth in the garden
in the shameful gaze of a flower whose name is lost
along with its survival in one infinite instant
when two suns stun each other…
The word is not about
the petty coward hiding under the sun at its zenith
The word is about day
And open windows
And fresh air
And about an incinerator for singed objects
And a land fertile with foreign seeds
And about procreation
And evolution
And pride…

The word is about our amorous hands
That build bridges with the sounds of scent light and breeze
In the realm of the night…
Come to the prairie
to the wide open fields
And call me from behind the breath
of the acacia flowers --
as the deer does its mate…

The curtains are rich with restrained anger
and the blameless pigeons watch the ground
from the height of their white tower.


Poem by Forough Farrokhzad
translated by Tatul Sonentz from the French translation of Sylvie M. Miller

آن كلاغي كه پريد

از فراز سرما

و فرو رفت در انديشه آشفته ابري ولگرد

و صدايش همچون نيزه كوتاهي پهناي افق را پيمود

خبر ما را با خود خواهد برد به شهر

همه مي دانند

همه مي دانند

كه من و تو از آن روزنه سرد عبوس

باغ را ديديم

و از آن شاخه بازيگر دور از دست

سيب را چيديم

همه مي ترسند

همه مي ترسند اما من و تو

به چراغ و آب و آينه پيوستيم

و نترسيديم

سخن از پيوند سست دو نام

و هم آغوشي در

اوراق كهنه يك دفتر نيست

سخن از گيسوي خوشبخت منست

با شقايق هاي سوخته بوسه تو

و صميميت تن هامان در طراري

و درخشيدن عريانيمان

مثل فلس ماهي ها در آب

سخن از زندگي نقره اي آوازيست

كه سحرگاهان فواره كوچك مي خواند

ما در آن جنگل سبز سيال

شبي از خرگوشان

وحشي

و در آن درياي مضطرب خونسرد

از صدف هاي پر از مرواريد

و در آن كوه غريب فاتح

از عقابان جوان پرسيديم

كه چه بايد كرد ؟

همه مي دانند

همه مي دانند

ما به خواب سرد و ساكت سيمرغان ره يافته ايم

ما حقيقت را در باغچه پيدا كرديم

در نگاه شرم آگين گلي

گمنام

و بقا را در يك لحظه نا محدود

كه دو خورشيد به هم خيره شدند

سخن از پچ پچ ترساني در ظلمت نيست

سخن از روزست و پنجره هاي باز

و هواي تازه

و اجاقي كه در آن اشيا بيهده مي سوزند

و زميني كه ز كشتي ديگر بارور است

و تولد و تكامل و غرور

سخن از دستان

عاشق ماست

كه پلي از پيغام عطر و نور و نسيم

بر فراز شبها ساخته اند

به چمنزار بيا

به چمنزار بزرگ

و صدايم كن از پشت نفس هاي گل ابريشم

همچنان آهو كه جفتش را

پرده ها از بغضي پنهاني سرشارند

و كبوترهاي معصوم

از بلندي هاي برج سپيد خود

به زمين مي نگرند

شعر "فتح باغ" از دفتر شعر "تولدی دیگر" شاعر "فروغ فرخزاد"

Forough Farrokhzad : GIFT

I speak
From the edge of night
I speak
From the edge of darkness
And night.

If you enter my house
My beloved
Bring me light
And a window to see
The happy noise
Of the street.


Poem by Forough Farrokhzad
Translated by Tatul Sonentz

Forough Farrokhzad : Couple

Night is here
And after night, darkness.
And after darkness
Eyes,
Hands and heaving,
And panting, and panting...

And sound of water
That drips from the faucet
Drop by drop.

Then two red dots
Of two lighted cigarettes.
Tick-tock of a clock
Two hearts
And double loneliness.

Poem by Forough Farrokhzad
translated by Tatul Sonentz Papazian